Sustainable development

Sustainable development can be seen as a "best fit" of the built environment to the natural environment. More accurately, it is the process of planning, designing and constructing in a way to reduce the overall environmental burden.

As the human population grows so does the the total consumption, material and energy. This, as it is the sum of the consumption of each person. Put another way, it is average consumption multiplied by population. As such, sustainable development also means that the population is kept at the same level or under the sustainable population limit.

"Just sustainability" offers a socially just conception of sustainability.
Just sustainability effectively addresses what has been called the 'equity deficit' of environmental sustainability (Agyeman, 2005:44)[2]. It is “the egalitarian conception of sustainable development" (Jacobs, 1999:32)[3]. It generates a more nuanced definition of sustainable development: “the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems” (Agyeman, et al., 2003:5)[4]. This conception of sustainable development focuses equally on four conditions: improving our quality of life and well-being; on meeting the needs of both present and future generations (intra- and intergenerational equity); on justice and equity in terms of recognition (Schlosberg, 1999)[5], process, procedure and outcome and on the need for us to live within ecosystem limits (also called one planet living) (Agyeman, 2005:92)[6].

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↑Agyeman, J., Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice, (New York, USA: New York University Press, 2005), 44.

↑Jacobs, M., Sustainable Development as a Contested Concept, in A. Dobson, Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999), 32.